Hillary’s gay speech to the UN and the rights of women at home

I wrote a piece yesterday about how I felt US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was getting a bad rap from some for her speech at the United Nations the other day about gay and trans human rights. The speech was historic, regardless of whether we think the Obama administration has done enough on our issues.

“In many places,” she reminded her audience, which included numerous representatives of nations with harrowingly antigay laws and practices, “legal and social practices that relegated women to second-class status have been abolished.”

“Like being a woman…” she concluded, “being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” It follows perfectly from the progress of women, does it not?

Today, the Department of Health and Human Services announced today that it had rejected the unanimous recommendation of the experts at the Food and Drug Administration to let young teenage girls buy the morning-after pill Plan B, like the condoms boys use, directly off drugstore and supermarket shelves without a prescription.

Secretary Clinton, phone home. All the high minded principles you lectured the world on yesterday are to the Obama Administration, well, so yesterday.

She concludes by asking when the women’s community is going to do what the gay community did, get in the administration’s face until they’re forced to come through.

John AravosisFollow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in New York City, and is the cofounder of TimeToResign.com. Bio, article archive.

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